Part of enjoying the playing of an audio/visual program (e.g., a piece of music, a recorded lecture, a recorded live performance, a movie, a slideshow, family pictures, an episode of a television program, etc.) is the task of selecting the desired audio/visual program to be played. Unfortunately, the increasing variety of choices of sources of audio/visual programs and the increasing variety of mechanisms by which audio/visual programs are able to be stored and played has greatly complicated what was once the relatively simple act of watching or listening to the playing of an audio/visual program to enjoy it.
For example, those wishing to “tune in” an audio/visual program being broadcast must now select a channel on which to view an audio/visual program from as many as 500 channels available through typical cable and/or satellite connections for television and/or radio. Further, it has become commonplace to employ audio/visual devices that are able to be programmed to autonomously tune in and record an audio/visual program for playing at a later time. Still further, it is now becoming increasingly commonplace to obtain audio/visual programs from websites accessible through the Internet, either by receiving those audio/visual programs as streaming data while they are played, or downloading those audio/visual programs as a storable digital file on an audio/visual device for playing at a later time. Yet further, some of these possible sources of audio/visual programs require paid subscriptions for which key cards and/or decryption keys are required to gain access to at least some audio/visual programs.
Those seeking to avail themselves of even a modest subset of such a wide array of options for playing an audio/visual program have often found themselves having to obtain multiple audio/visual devices (e.g., tuners, descramblers, disc media players, video recorders, web access devices, digital file players, televisions, visual displays without tuners, etc.). Each such audio/visual device often has a unique user interface, and more often than not, is accompanied by a separate handheld wireless remote control by which it is operated. Attempts have been made to grapple with the resulting plethora of remote controls that often accompany a multitude of audio/visual devices by providing so-called “universal remotes” enabling multiple audio/visual devices to be operated using a single remote control. However, a universal remote tends to go only so far in satisfying the desire of many users to simplify the coordination required in the operation of multiple audio/visual devices to perform the task of playing an audio/visual program.
Efforts have recently been made through cooperation among multiple purveyors of audio/visual devices to further ease the coordinated operation of multiple audio/visual devices through the adoption of standardized command codes and various approaches to coupling multiple audio/visual devices to enable the exchange of those standardized command codes among multiple audio/visual devices. An example of this effort is the CEC standardized command set created as part of the HDMI interface specification promulgated by HDMI Licensing, LLC of Sunnyvale, Calif. However, these efforts, even in conjunction with a universal remote, still only go so far in making the playing of an audio/visual program into a truly simple undertaking.